• Plan Internacional history began in 1937 during Spain’s bloody civil war
• NGO fights child poverty, focus on root causes of discrimination against girls

Plan Internacional España, the Spanish affiliate of global NGO Plan International, which works worldwide to promote children’s rights and end child poverty, has released a new video in Spanish showing the roots of the organisation in Spain in 1937, when it was launched in an effort to relieve the suffering of thousands of children orphaned, homeless and hungry during the country’s devastating 1936-39 civil war.

The spot video on YouTube, also available in a longer version in English (see below), tells how British journalist John Langdon-Davies and British volunteer worker Eric Muggeridge launched the organisation in 1937 with the name “Foster Parents Plan for Children in Spain”. The organisation rapidly expanded as the Spanish Civil War dragged on, rallying support for its efforts to provide food, shelter and education to Spanish children in Britain and the United States, where it received the help of then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Hollywood stars Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Frank Sinatra and others.

From its beginnings in Spain in 1937, Plan International has expanded to working today with 600,000 volunteers in some 58,000 communities across more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, promoting the rights of children and working to end child poverty, placing particular emphasis on combating the root causes of discrimination, social exclusion and poverty that affect girls and young women around the world.